So this is an odd map. Beast and Barbarians is a campaign setting for the Savage World rules system. This map of a specific region in the Beast and Barbarians world. It’s not for use with miniatures as the area it covers is far too large and it’s not something that can be used outside this very specific campaign setting. That means, unless you are using Beasts and Barbarians, this map is fundamentally useless to you. This is primarily geared for DMs running a B&B campaign and who want to hand this map out to players. This is about as niche as a map can get, especially since it’s already available in the main B&B book. However, it’s a free download which means GRAmel realizes the limited audience has and it is always nice to see a publisher helping out their audience with free handouts. Sure it might be useless to you or I, but to those playing B&B, this is a nice touch to show the creators care about the DMs and their players.

The map is a single page black and white artist etching of what the area around the Dread Sea would look like. It shows different regions and countries, but also feels like something true cartographers a thousand years ago would have done, by having little illustrations here and there to capture the flavor of specific areas. For example, you have an Eastern Dragon around the city of clouds and what appears to be a giraffe by Caldeia. It’s where cute and I really love how thematic the map is, even if it can’t be used by everyone.

Since it’s free, it can’t hurt to check this map out. However the map really can’t tell you anything about the campaign setting of Beasts and Barbarians and in that respect, it doesn’t sell the game to newcomers very well. Still, the only way to know if you’ll like B&B or not is to pick up the Player’s Guide, so perhaps we’ll be reviewing that on its own down the road.